THE EXPERIENCE OF HAIZI: lean, like a swan over the landscape night waiting for the warmth of spring flowers

Autumn: “Use our skeletons, absurdly laid across the ground

Write in the sandy beach: youth. Then carry the senile father upon your back

Endless daytime      the direction broken off

Animal dread is filling our poetry

And whose voice can reach the autumn midnight – a lasting discord

Conceal our skeletons, absurdly laid across the ground –

Autumn’s already coming.

Not the faintness of pity or affection: autumn’s already coming.”

 

Swan: “In the night, I heard the sound of swans flying over a distant bridge

The river water in my body

Echoing them

When they fly over birthday loam, dusk loam

There is a wounded swan

In fact only the lovely wind that rustles knows

She herself is wounded. She’s still in flight

And yet the river water in my body is heavy

As heavy as door panels hanging on houses

When they fly across a distant bridge

I cannot use graceful flight to echo them

They seem a heavy snow when flying across a graveyard

And yet, in the heavy snow there’s not a road that leads to my front door

—The body has no door—only fingers

Vertical in the graveyard, like ten more frost-bitten candles

On my loam

On birthday loam

There is one wounded swan

Straight as a folk song deftly sung.”

 

Facing the Ocean, with Warming Spring Flowers Bloom: “From tomorrow on,

become a joyous man

Feed horses, chop firewood, travel the world

From tomorrow on, consider grains and vegetables

I have one house, facing the ocean, with warming spring flowers bloom

From tomorrow on, keep in touch with all relatives by mail

To tell them about my joy

The lightning of that joy reveals it’s mine

I, then, shall tell every single person

Let every stretch of stream, every mass of mountain draw a warm name

Stranger, I also give you blessings

May you have a bright future

May your lovers unite in wedlock

May you harvest joy in dirt and weeds

I just wish to face the ocean, with warming spring flowers bloom.”

 

The Nightscape:”In the nightscape

I have three times suffered hardships: wandering, loving, existing

I have three forms of happiness: poetry, throne, sun.”